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A°<* 



POEMS 
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Hitherto Unpublished 





Jf POEMS 

ROBERT LOUIS 
STEVENSON 

HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED 

WITH 

INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

GEORGE S. HELLMAN 

AND 

WILLIAM P. TRENT 



THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY" 

PRINTED FOR MEMBERS ONLY 

BOSTON-MC MXXI 







p 7 \ 



Copyright, 1921. by 

THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



AUG 1171 



©".'..A617916 



Life's winds and billows, hoarse and shrill, 
Could ne'er his minstrel-ardor still; 
He sailed and piped until his breath 
Went out within the grip of death; 
And now, upon his island home, 
Fringed with the far Pacific foam, 
He lies at peace, beloved, renowned 
The sympathetic world around. 

W. P. T. 



INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST 
LINES IN THIS VOLUME 



A Summer Night 

All influences were in vain 

All night through, raves or broods 

At morning on the garden seat . 

Aye, mon, it's true . 

Eh, man Henley, you're a Don 

Far over seas an island is 

Gather ye roses while ye may . 

Good old ale, mild or pale 

Her name is as a word of old romance 

Here he comes, big with statistics 

Here lies Erotion 

Hopes ..... 

I am a hunchback, yellow-faced 

I am like one that has sat alone 

I have a friend ; I have a story . 

I look across the ocean 

I saw red evening through the rain 

I sit up here at midnight . 

If I could arise and travel away 

If I had wings, my lady . 

[»] 



39 

43 
102 

109 

130 
100 
132 

86 

113 
82 

75 
126 

69 

139 

57 

65 

141 

92 

58 

in 

98 



In autumn when the woods are red . 

Last night we had a thunderstorm, etc 

Light as my heart was long ago 

Link your arm in mine, my lad . 

Love is the very heart of spring 

My wife and I, in one romantic cot 

Nay, but I fancy somehow, etc. . 

Of schooners, islands and maroons 

O lady fair and sweet 

On the gorgeous hills of morning 

Poem for a Class Re-union 

Rivers and winds among the twisted hills 

Since I am sworn to live my life 

Sit doon by me, my canty freend 

Take not my hand as mine alone 

The look of Death is both severe and mild 

The Mill-House 

The moon is sinking, etc. . 

The old world moans and topes 

The rain is over and done 

The Well-Head 

The whole day thro', etc. . 

There where the land of love 

To Priapus 

To A Youth . 

We are as maidens, one and all 

Yes, I remember, etc. 



78 

94 

84 

61 

107 

117 

114 

122 

96 

134 

89 

137 

87 

76 

4i 
80 

29 
50 

54 
104 

35 

52 

105 

128 

72 

47 
119 



[12] 



THE STEVENSON MANUSCRIPTS 

At the time when the great mass of manu- 
scripts, books, and other personal belongings 
of Robert Louis Stevenson were dispersed 
through a New York auction room in Novem- 
ber 1914, and January 1915, the whole of 
civilization was being shaken to its very foun- 
dations, and the exigencies of the times were 
such that people were concerned with more 
important matters than the acquisition of 
manuscripts and relics. Therefore the sale, 
which in ordinary times would have attracted 
widespread attention among editors, critics, 
publishers and collectors, went comparatively 
unnoticed amid the general clamor and ap- 
prehension of the time. There was, however, 
one vigilant Stevenson collector, in the person 
of Mr. Francis S. Peabody, who bought a 
large part of the unpublished manuscripts at 
the sale, and has since acquired most of 

[13] 



the remainder which went chiefly to various 
dealers. Mr. Peabody has generously offered 
to share the enjoyment of his Stevenson treas- 
ures with his fellow bibliophiles, and we are 
indebted to him for the privilege of issuing 
the first printed edition of many precious 
items, without which no collection of Steven- 
soniana can ever be regarded as being com- 
plete. 

It will be remembered that the last years 
of Stevenson's life were spent at Samoa, 
which became the only permanent home of 
his married life, where he kept his great col- 
lection of manuscripts and note books, the 
accumulation of his twenty-odd years of 
work; and where, being far removed from the 
centers of civilization, he came very little in 
contact with editors or publishers who, dur- 
ing his lifetime or subsequently, would have 
been interested in ransacking his chests for 
new material. When his personal effects were 
finally packed up and shipped to the United 
States they were sent to the auction room 
and disposed of for ready cash, and thereafter 
it became impossible for publishers to acquire 
either the possession or the publication rights 



of the manuscripts without great expense and 
inconvenience. 

From events that have transpired since the 
publication in 1916 of the two-volume Bib- 
liophile edition of Stevenson's unpublished 
poems, we are led to believe that the literary 
importance of the manuscripts was not appre- 
ciated by the Stevenson heirs. It is neither 
necesssary nor advisable to comment or specu- 
late further upon the circumstances which led 
to the sale of the manuscripts before being 
published ; whatever they may have been, they 
are of far less importance to the public than 
the established fact that the manuscripts were 
dispersed before being transcribed or pub- 
lished, and the further fact that they ulti- 
mately came into the possession of an owner 
who now permits them to be printed. 

If it be regrettable that the distribution of 
the present edition, in which there is des- 
tined to be a world-wide interest, is confined 
to the relatively limited membership of a book 
club, the circumstances are made inevitable 
by certain fundamental rules, without which 
no cohesive body of booklovers can long exist. 
And these restrictive measures are not in- 

[15] 



spired by selfish motives, but purely as a 
matter of necessity in preserving the organ- 
ization. 

Some of the manuscripts printed in the four 
separate volumes now issued were not avail- 
able at the time when the two-volume edition 
was brought out by The Bibliophile Society 
in 1916, and it was thought best to defer their 
publication until such time as we could bring 
together the major part of the remaining in- 
edited material, which we believe has now 
been accomplished. 

H. H. H. 



[16] 



INTRODUCTION 

The present collection of hitherto unpub- 
lished poems gathered from the manuscripts 
of Robert Louis Stevenson will be found to 
contain much that is of keen interest to read- 
ers and of both sentimental and practical 
value to collectors. Nor is it likely that this 
interest and value will prove to be transitory, 
since the volume now offered, like its notable 
predecessors issued by The Bibliophile So- 
ciety in 1916, must afford very important aid 
to future biographers and critics of a writer 
who has taken a high and secure place in the 
literature of the English-speaking peoples. 
Although the books of verse issued under the 
supervision of Stevenson himself and of his 
representatives may contain a larger number 
of finished, artistic products along with the 
few poems in which his genius found perfect 
expression, such as the best pieces of "The 

[17] 



Child's Garden," "Requiem," and "In Mem- 
oriam F. A. S.," the poems here and lately 
published from his manuscripts may fairly be 
held to do more than the earlier volumes of 
his verse could ever have done towards estab- 
lishing his reputation as a poet born, not 
made; as a writer who could probably have 
won fame through poetry had he not turned 
to prose, as a child of song not unworthy to 
be remembered with those Scotch forerun- 
ners whom he so delighted to honor, Robert 
Fergusson and Robert Burns. 

Like Fergusson and Burns, Stevenson is not 
less interesting as a man than he is as a poet, 
and it is therefore proper to consider first the 
biographical importance of the poems here 
collected. One piece in particular calls for 
attention. The lines assigned provisionally 
to the year 1872, "I have a friend; I have a 
story," if Mr. Hellman be right, as he doubt- 
less is, in connecting them with the verses first 
published in 1916 entitled "God gave to me 
a child in part," offer hints of a love tragedy 
of intense passion and suffering enacted in 
Edinburgh in the opening years of Steven- 
son's manhood. It is neither necessary nor 

[18] 



prudent, where all is as yet shadowy, to ven- 
ture upon speculations specific in character, 
but it seems permissible to wonder whether in 
the two poems just named we have not heard 
a rustling premonitory of the gradual lifting 
of the curtain that has appeared to screen 
phases at least of the youthful career of the 
poet and romancer. 

That Stevenson was no saint in what Sir 
Sidney Colvin discreetly calls "his daft stu- 
dent days" has long been clear, despite the 
deft indefiniteness with which editors, biog- 
raphers and friends have treated the period; 
but with the challenge these two poems, inter- 
preted as they have been, fling down to ret- 
icence — loyal and commendable though this 
has surely been thus far — and with the sup- 
porting hints and implications that may be 
gathered from other verses of the same period 
of immaturity and effervescence, one feels that 
the legend-making against which Henley 
raised his much deprecated but unforgettable 
protest must soon be more or less a thing of 
the shamefaced past. 

It was natural for Stevenson's contempor- 
aries and for the immediately succeeding gen- 

[19] 



eration of readers to give themselves to the cult 
of a charming poet for children, a courageous 
mentor and fascinating companion of youth, 
a lay-preacher with a gospel of cheery opti- 
mism drawn from triumph over suffering and 
adapted to all human beings whatever their 
time and condition of life. It was equally 
natural for Stevenson's intimate friends, who 
believed that the side of his character which 
contemporaries admired was the best and tru- 
est side of the man they knew and loved, not 
to dwell upon another side of him, especially 
of his earlier self, which did not so justly and 
fully represent him, and called for no em- 
phasis in those days when his fame was in the 
making. Yet, whatever Henley's lack of tact 
and his underlying promptings, conscious or 
unconscious, his protest, we cannot but feel, 
was one that had to be made sooner or later, 
and now that those most likely to be vitally 
affected by resolute biographical realism have 
passed away, it is not treasonable to Steven- 
son's memory to hope that the publication by 
The Bibliophile Society of manuscripts which 
he did not destroy and must consequently, in 
a sense, have destined to publication, will 

[20] 



mark the beginning of a period of minute 
scholarly investigation into each stage of his 
life. He would have been the last person to 
object to this, and his best admirers are surely 
those who serenely welcome every honest at- 
tempt at study of his life and works as well 
as all efforts to recover whatever scrap of his 
multifarious writings may appear to possess 
the slightest value. 

To such scholarly investigation the present 
collection and the prior Bibliophile volumes 
will be indispensable. They show plainly 
that verse-making played a much larger part 
in Stevenson's training as a writer — a matter 
abundantly discussed — than there had form- 
erly been reason even so much as to suspect. 
It is open to doubt whether Mrs. Stevenson 
herself, although her intelligence in all that 
concerned her famous husband was almost 
equal to her devotion to him and to his mem- 
ory, ever fully comprehended the range of 
his poetic interests, or carefully examined the 
mass of his early experiments in verse. I am 
at least certain that when some twenty-one 
years ago I wrote an introduction to an Am- 
erican edition of a part of Stevenson's then 

[21] 



known poetry, I had no notion that what I 
then had before me did not represent even 
half of his accomplished work in that cate- 
gory of literature. There was then, for ex- 
ample, little ground for believing that the 
strictly lyrical impulse was strong in him 
from the beginning; that he had ever very 
seriously essayed the old French forms of 
verse in which his contemporaries like Lang 
and Dobson were so fluent, or that he had 
shown more than an amateurish interest in 
the work of such a poet as Martial. 

It is true, of course, that his discussions of 
Villon and of Charles of Orleans might, 
without Mr. Graham Balfour's aid, have led 
one to suspect dabbling in French forms, and 
it is possibly true that for at least a consid- 
erable portion of his later life the writing 
of verse was, to quote the biographer just 
named, "almost always a resource of illness 
or of convalescence." He appears, according 
to the same authority, to have written "Re- 
quiem" when recovering from the drastic ill- 
ness at Hyeres in the early eighties, and in a 
letter to his mother he confirmed in a measure 
the view just cited, when he declared, "I do 

[22] 



nothing but play patience and write verse, the 
true sign of my decadence." But much the 
greater part of the present volume, and most 
of the first of the two Bibliophile volumes of 
191 6, must be assigned to the decade preced- 
ing the breakdown on the Riviera, and the 
verses they contain suggest "storm and stress" 
more than they do valetudinarianism. 

It seems plain therefore that, although no 
longer than five years ago it might have been 
permissible to regard Stevenson as an excep- 
tion to the rule that successful writers of prose 
often begin their careers with verse-writing 
which they later abandon, it is now neces- 
sary — and pleasant — to believe that in this 
respect, as in not a few others, the lines of 
his development run parallel with those fol- 
lowed in the case of many a distinguished pre- 
decessor. This is fortunate, since wider and 
more permanent fame is the portion of those 
who keep steadily to the broad highways of 
literature than seems to come to those who to 
any appreciable extent are diverted into its 
by-ways. The more Stevenson's career as a 
man of letters is studied, the less, it is to be 
hoped, will it appear eccentric. As poet, 

[23] 



essayist, romancer, correspondent, and writer 
of travels, he keeps step with his great peers, 
and like them he has arrived at the bourne 
of permanent and large renown. 

Of more specific comment upon the present 
new poems there seems to be little need, since 
Mr. Hellman has covered the important 
points in his introductory notes. Still it may 
be desirable to call attention here to the strong 
influence exerted on the early and notable 
poem, "The Mill House," by one of Steven- 
son's favorite poets — now dead just a century 
— John Keats. The curious individuality of 
"The Well-Head," the note of poetic intensity 
in the poem beginning, "I am like one that has 
sat alone" — due, perhaps, to the influence of 
Heine, who was one of Stevenson's early 
masters despite a repugnance to the German 
language sometimes expressed in the corres- 
pondence — the singular wealth of poetical 
material dissociated from the needed techni- 
cal skill in handling to be observed in "To a 
Youth," the courage with its touch of brav- 
ado, attributable in part to frail health, dis- 
played in "Since I am sworn to live my life," 
— one of the experiments in French forms 

[24] 



which constitute perhaps the most important 
contribution made by the present collection, 
although not necessarily the most attractive — 
on all these points one might dwell at some 
length with pleasure and possible profit were 
one writing a formal essay. Even in a brief 
foreword it seems incumbent to forestall the 
notes in emphasizing the daring unconven- 
tionality of "Last night we had a thunder- 
storm in style," the humor of "Eh, man Hen- 
ley, you're a don," the curious anticipation 
of Kipling in "If I could arise and travel 
away," the poignant note of "The rain is over 
and done," — not exceptional in the verses of 
this fermenting epoch of Stevenson's life — 
and, last but not least, the rather extraordin- 
ary quality of certain individual lines. Evi- 
dences of immaturity in respect to details of 
literary training are everywhere to be found, 
but who, save a poet of authentic utterance, 
would have been likely to achieve such initial 
verses as — 

"I saw red evening through the rain," 
or "Love is the very heart of spring," 
or "Of schooners, islands, and maroons," 
or "Far over seas an island is," 

[25] 



whether or not he was able to continue the 
poetic flight so auspiciously begun? 

But it is time to let the reader judge of 
these matters for himself. 

W. P. T. 



[26] 



POEMS 
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Hitherto Unpublished 



THE MILL-HOUSE— 1866 

This impressive poem antedates any piece 
included in any previous volume of Steven- 
son's verse, and appears to be the longest of 
his early attempts at poetry. Written pre- 
sumably at Swanston, it is very successful in 
many of its descriptive passages, both in its 
sense of actuality, as where "great horses 
strain against the load of the sack-laden 
wagons," and in that imaginative atmosphere 
created by chivalrous knights and phantom 
castles. It is permissible to believe that the 
verses are merely the opening portion of some 
long composition which Stevenson had in 
mind; yet in themselves they give a sense of 
completeness, because the poet, after having 
let his thought wander into the fields of ro- 
mance and of faery, ends his manuscript with 
a mental and spiritual return to those prob- 
lems of life, those "grim questionings of 
heart," which were just beginning to absorb 
the thoughtful and passionate boy. 



[29] 



THE MILL-HOUSE 

(a sick-bed fancy) 

An alley ran across the pleasant wood, 

On either side of whose broad opening stood 

Wide-armed green elms of many a year, great 

bowers 
Of perfect greenery in summer hours. 
A small red pathway slow meandered there 
Between two clumps of grapes, [both] lush 

and fair, 
Well grown, that brushed a tall man past the 

knee. 
No summer day grew therein over hot, 
For there was a pleasant freshness in the spot 
Brought thither by a stream that men might 

see 
Behind the rough-barked bole of every tree — 
A little stream that ever murmured on 
And here and there in sudden sunshine shone; 
But for the most part, swept by shadowy 

boughs, 
Among tall grass and fallen leaves did drowse, 
With ever and anon, a leap, a gleam, 
As some cross boulder lay athwart the stream. 

[30] 






UrL<PA. Ca^jS^_ Cl~^£_ &^-<n.^ c<- ^L^^. y ^- C^tL&si*^ f 



Close following down this alley, one came 

near 
The place where it descended sudden, sheer, 
Into a dell betwixt two wooded hills, 
Where ran a river made of many rills. 
Near where to this the little alley stream 
Lapsed in a turmoil, stood as in a dream 
A lone, small mill-house in the vale aloof 
With orange mosses on a grey slate roof 
And all the walls and every lintel stone 
With water mosses cunningly o'ergrown. 
Its four-paned windows looked across a pool 
By shadow of the house and trees kept cool; 
Pent by the mossy weir that served the mill, 
Its little waters lay unmoved and still, 
Save for a circular, slow, eddy-wheeling 
That on its bubble-spotted breast kept stealing 
And now and then the sudden, short wind- 
sway 
Of some elm branch or beachen, that all day 
Trailed in the shadowed pool; but far below 
The enfranchised waters, in tumultuous flow, 
Splashed round the boulders and leapt on in 

foam 
Adown the sunshine way that led them home. 

[31] 



There was no noise at all about the mill 
And the slope garden, like a dream, was still. 
There came no sound at all into the glade, 
Save when the white sack-laden waggons 

made 
Wheel-creaking in the shadowy, slanting road 
And the great horses strained against the load ; 
Or when some trout would splash in the pool 

perhaps, 
Or my old pointer from his pendulous chaps 
Bayed at the very stillness. In the house 
It was so strangely quiet that the mouse 
Held carnival at midday on the floor. 
The hearths were lined with Holland picture 

tiles 
Of olden stories of enchanters' wiles; 
And knights, stiff-seeming, upon stirrer steeds 
Hasting to help fair ladies at their needs; 
And bible tales, of prophets and of kings; 
And faery ones, of midnight, meadow rings 
Whereon, at mild star-rise, the wanton elves 
Dance, having cleared the grass blades for 

themselves 
As we men clear a forest; and besides 
Of phantom castles and of woodland rides, 
Of convent cloisters and religious veils 

[32] 



And all such like, were drawn a hundred 

tales ; 
And therein was the swinging censer showed, 
And therein altar candles feebly glowed 
And the bent priest upraised the sacred host. 
And when the dusk drew on, in times of frost, 
And new fires sparkled on the clean swept 

hearth 
And with pale tongues and laughing sound of 

mirth 
Licked the dry wood and carven iron dogs 
Whereon was piled the treasure of the logs, 
In the red glow that rose and waned again 
The pictured figures writhed as if in pain, 
Elijah shook his mantle, and the knight 
His spear, and 'mong the elves of foot-fall 

light 
One saw the dance grow faster, till the flame 
Once more drew in, and all things were the 

same. 

Nor were there wanting fleshlier joys than 

these ; 
For as the night grew closer and the trees 
Hissed in the wind, before the ruddy fire 
Was spread the napkin, white to a desire, 

[33] 



Laid out with silver vessels and brown bread 
And some hot pasty smoking at the head 
With odorous vapour, and the jug afloat 
With bitter, amber ale that stings the throat 
Or figured glasses full of purple wine. 
Or should one ask for pleasures more divine, 
Then let him draw toward the pleasant blaze 
And in the warm still chamber, let him raise 
Blue wreaths of pungent vapor from the 

bowl, 
That glows and dusks like an ignited coal 
At every inhalation of sweet smoke. 
So shall he clear a stage for that quaint folk, 
The brood of dreams, that faery puppet race 
That will not dance but on a vacant space; 
And purge from every prejudice or creed 
His easy spirit, that with greater speed, 
He may outrun the boundaries of art 
And grapple with grim questionings of heart. 



[34] 



THE WELL-HEAD— 1869 

The "Prayer," which was the opening poem 
in the 1916 Bibliophile edition of Stevenson 
manuscripts, was written in October, 1869; 
and to the month of March of that year be- 
longs the present poem, composed also in a 
spirit of religious reverence, yet with an in- 
teresting element of doubt as to the superior- 
ity of a future life over man's "dear world of 
hill and plain." 

The "mottoes for the beginning," jotted 
down by Stevenson and here retained, 1 show 
the source of the theme, and incidentally 
establish the identity of the "Ayrshire peas- 
ant" who might otherwise have been mistaken 
for Robert Burns. But the young Stevenson 
is unable to follow Sir Thomas Browne, or 

1 MOTTOES FOR THE BEGINNING 

"To thoughtful observators the whole world is a philactery 
and everything we see an item of the wisdom, power or good- 
ness of God." Sir T. Browne's Christain Morals, Part III. 

"And (God) gradually manifested Himself to me more and 
more when viewing His works, till at last I saw His glorious 
being and perfections shine forth brightly in a refreshing drink 
of water which I took" — "A rare-Soul-strengthening and Com- 
forting Cordial, by John Stevenson, Land Labourer in the 
Parish of Daily in Carrick, who died in the year 1728" — 
Select Biographies: Woodrow Society. 

[35] 



the eighteenth century John Stevenson, in 
finding in Nature, or in Nature's creatures, 
God the Creator. The closing stanzas show 
his passionate desire for such consummation, 
but the poem as a whole does not follow 
the Hebraic attitude, adopted by Christianity, 
of perceiving God in his works. Stevenson 
distinctly states how difficult it is with him; 
how 

The creatures will not let me see 
The great creator of them all; 

and the poem reveals the quandary of one 
caught up in religious yearning, who is yet pre- 
eminently a Pagan in his devotion to Nature 
in itself. The very title suggests the duality 
of the young Stevenson's mental struggle, the 
"well-head" being both the natural source of 
physical waters, and the divine source of life's 
spiritual stream. 

THE WELL-HEAD 

The withered rushes made a flame 

Across the marsh of rusty red; 
The dreary plover ever came 

And sang above the old well-head. 

[36] 



About it crouch the junipers, 

Green-black and dewed with berries white, 
And in the grass the water stirs, 

Aloud all day, aloud all night. 

The spring has scarcely come, 'tis said; 

Yet sweet and pleasant art thou still, 
'Mong withered rushes, old well-head, 

Upon the sallow-shouldered hill. 

The grass from which these waters came, 
These waters swelling from the sod, 

Had been a bible unto some, 
A grave phylactery of God. 

The Ayrshire peasant, years ago, 
Drank down religion in a cool 

Deep draught of waters such as flow 
From out this pebbly little pool. 

But different far is it with me, 

Here, where the piping curlews call; 

The creatures will not let me see 
The great creator of them all. 

And I should choose to go to sleep, 
With Merlin in Broceliande, 

[37] 



To hear the elm boughs hiss and sweep, 
In summer winds on either hand. 

To cling to forest-trees and grass 

And this dear world of hill and plain, 

For fear, whatever came to pass, 
God would not give as good again. 

And some may use the gospel so, 

That is a pharos unto me, 
And guide themselves to hell, although 

Their chart should lead them unto Thee. 

Lord, shut our eyes or shut our mind, 
Or give us love, in case we fall ; 

'Tis better to go maim and blind 
Than not to reach the Lord at all. 



[38] 



A SUMMER NIGHT— 1869 

While these verses, dated October 25, 1869, 
have a formal similarity to the March poem 
of the preceding pages, beginning as they do 
with a description of Nature and ending on 
the religious note, they differ essentially, in- 
asmuch as here Stevenson finds in the glow 
of the sky the symbol of the promise of Heav- 
enly light. 

A SUMMER NIGHT 

About us lies the summer night; 

The darkling earth is dusk below; 
But high above, the sky is bright 

Between the eve and morning glow. 

Clear white of dawn, and apple green, 
Sole lingering of the evening's hue, 

Behind the clustered trees are seen, 
Across dark meadows drencht in dew. 

So glow above the dusk of sin, 
Remembrance of Redemption vast, 

And future hope of joy therein 
That shall be shed on us at last. 

[39] 



Each haloed in its husk of light, 
Atoms and worlds about us lie; 

Though here we grope awhile in night, 
'Tis always daylight up on high. 



[40] 



TAKE NOT MY HAND AS MINE 
ALONE— 1871 

While in various poems of this year Steven- 
son thinks of himself as one who shall be a 
leader in recruiting humanity for endeavors 
towards fairer goals than the past has for the 
most part set, he here writes in a more modest 
vein, and emphasizes the fact that his hand is 
but one in a chain of helpfulness, and that 
the real debt is to those great bygone leaders 
from whom he has caught his inspiration. 



TAKE NOT MY HAND AS MINE 
ALONE 

Take not my hand as mine alone — 

You do not trust to me — 
I hold the hand of greater men 

Too far before to see. 

Follow not me, who only trace 
Stoop-head the prints of those 

Our mighty predecessors, whom 
The darknesses enclose. 



[41] 



I cannot lead who follow — I 
Who learn, am dumb to teach; 

I can but indicate the goals 
That greater men shall reach. 



[42] 



ALL INFLUENCES WERE IN VAIN 

1871 

In this poem written in that mixed mood 
of dejection and of high resolve so character- 
istic of Stevenson at this period, the meta- 
phors are decidedly interesting. The picture 
of Stevenson walking with his shadow and 
his regret, a trio on the sand; the "thought- 
wheels galloping through the night into the 
morning tide;" the thoughts that he seeks to 
convoke for a plebiscite; the band of wan- 
dering thoughts falling into rank for the ser- 
ious march onward — are all notable and in 
keeping with the spirit of the poem. But at 
the very end his sense of humor leads him to 
a witty touch not quite worthy of the lines 
that precede it; and while one rejoices that 
the regret which accompanied him so closely 
in the second stanza has been dissipated by the 
time the final stanza has been reached, its 
plight might have been phrased in a manner 
more in keeping with the tenor of the earlier 
lines. 



[43] 



ALL INFLUENCES WERE IN VAIN 

All influences were in vain, 

The sun dripped gold among the trees, 
The fresh breeze blew, the woody plain 

Ruffled and whispered in the breeze. 

All day the sea was on one hand, 

The long beach shone with sun and wet — 
We walked in trio on the sand, 

My shadow, I and my regret! 

Eve came. I clambered to my bed, 

Regret lay restless by my side, 
The thought-wheels galloped in my head 

All night into the morning tide. 

The thought-wheels span so madly quick, 
So many thousand times an hour, 

Thought after thought took life, as thick 
As bats in some old belfry tower. 

My mind was in emeute! each thought 

Usurped its individual right. 
In vain, I temporised — I sought 

In vain to hold a plebiscite! 

[44] 



Thoughts jostled thoughts — By hill and glade 
They scattered far and wide like sheep, 

I stretched my arms — I cried — I prayed — 
They heard not — I began to weep. 1 

My head grew giddy-weak — I tried 
To drown my reason. All in vain. 

I lay upon my face and cried 
Most bitterly to God again. 

God put a thought into my hand, 
God gave me a resolve, an aim. 

I blew it trumpet-wise — the band 
Of scattered fancies heard and came. 

They heard the bugle tones I blew — 

The wandering thoughts came dropping in ; 

They took their ranks in silence due — 
One hour, and would the march begin? 

The march began; and once begun 
The serious purpose, true design 

Has held my being knit in one — 
My being kept the thoughts in line. 

1 Later in life, Stevenson in looking over this poem drew a 
pencil mark under the last half of this line, and wrote "Bah!" 
after it. 

[45] 



Since then, the waves are still. The tide 
Sets steadily and strongly out. 

The sea shines tranquil, far and wide, 
My mind is past the surf of doubt. 

The pole-star of my purpose keeps 
The constant line that I should steer. 

At night my weary body sleeps, 
My brain works orderly and clear. 

All things are altered since I set 
The steady goal before my face; 

All things are changed; and my regret 
Is advertising for a place! 

"Companion for an invalide — 

The Rene-sort preferred — genteel 

And orthodox." I wish it speed — 
The creature kept so well to heel! 



[46] 



WE ARE AS MAIDENS ONE AND 

ALL— 1 87 1 

When Stevenson, in later years, was going 
over his youthful manuscripts, copying many 
of them, unquestionably with the intention of 
having them sooner or later find their way 
into print, he annotated the present manu- 
script with the significant ejaculation, "pooh- 
pooh!" This trenchant criticism, presum- 
ably due to the effeminate note in the imagery 
of the verses, strongly inclined us at first to 
follow the author's lead, and omit the poem 
from the present volume. But on further con- 
sideration it was thought best to let the verses 
take their place with the other compositions 
of their period; for while some readers may 
marvel at lines where human beings, it would 
seem, are compared to convent maidens, and 
Stevenson himself to a bashful bride, the 
poem has many appealing qualities, both in 
its phraseology and in its thought. 

Especially notable is the picture of Death, 
who, cantering on his "great gray horse," sug- 
gests the engravings of Durer and other old 
masters. In referring to Death as "that splen- 

[47] 



did acred Lord," Stevenson has found an or- 
iginal description, whether we interpret the 
phrase as referring to cemeteries — or "God's 
acres," as they used to be called — or whether 
we think of Death as master of all the earth. 
The concluding stanza in which Stevenson 
disavows fear of the kiss of Death is of spe- 
cial interest, since, from early childhood he 
was always consciously within its shadow. 

DEATH 

We are as maidens one and all, 

In some shut convent place, 
Pleased with the flowers, the service bells, 

The cloister's shady grace, 

That whiles, with fearful, fluttering hearts, 

Look outward thro the grate 
And down the long white road, up which, 

Some morning, soon or late, 

Shall canter on his great grey horse 

That splendid acred Lord 
Who comes to lead us forth — his wife, 

But half with our accord. 

[48] 



With fearful fluttered hearts we wait — 

We meet him, bathed in tears; 
We are so loath to leave behind 

Those tranquil convent years ; 

So loath to meet the pang, to take 
(On some poor chance of bliss) 

Life's labour on the windy sea 
For a bower as still as this. 

Weeping we mount the crowded aisle, 

And weeping after us 
The bridesmaids follow — Come to me! 

I will not meet you thus, 

Pale rider to the convent gate. 

Come, O rough bridegroom, Death, 
Where, bashful bride, I wait you, veiled, 

Flush-faced, with shaken breath ; 

I do not fear your kiss. I dream 

New days, secure from strife, 
And, bride-like, in the future hope — 

A quiet household life. 



[49] 



THE MOON IS SINKING— THE TEM- 
PESTUOUS WEATHER— 1871 

This fragment proceeds far enough to show 
Stevenson at work on the same theme — the 
onward march despite difficulties — that first 
engrossed him in 1871 and afforded the ma- 
terial for numerous verses of that year. The 
lines have little in themselves to recommend 
them, and Stevenson after having laid aside 
his mediocre beginning comes back to it later 
just long enough to add the amusing com- 
ments of the last four words of his manu- 
script. This touch of humor would seem to 
warrant the inclusion of the fragment, being 
characteristic of the detached critical attitude 
which Stevenson took towards his own work. 



[50] 



THE MOON IS SINKING— THE TEM- 
PESTUOUS WEATHER 

The moon is sinking — the tempestuous 
weather 
Grows worse, the squalls disputing our ad- 
vance; 
And as the feet fall well and true together 
In the last moonlight, see! the standards 
glance! 

One hour, one moment, and that light forever. 
Quite so. 
Jes' so. 



[51] 



.THE WHOLE DAY THRO', IN CON-. 
TEMPT AND PITY— 1871 

The poem entitled "Prelude," previously 
printed by The Bibliophile Society, was ac- 
companied by a manuscript note of Steven- 
son's to the effect that it was then that he first 
began to take interest in the poor and sorrow- 
ful. In that poem he beats his drum in search 
of recruits to make life happier. The present 
poem shows the same metaphor, and through- 
out is similar in theme and purpose, — its fine 
note of optimism coming to a climax in the 
closing stanza where Stevenson, full of his 
new sympathy with humanity, likes to think of 
all men as heroes in a common cause. 

THE WHOLE DAY THRO', IN CON- 
TEMPT AND PITY 

The whole day thro', in contempt and pity, 
I pass your houses and beat my drum, 
In the roar of people that go and come, 
In the sunlit streets of the city. 

Hark! do you hear the ictus coming, 
Mid the roar and clatter of feet? 

[52] 



Hark! in the ebb and flow of the street 
Do you hear the sound of my drumming? 

Sun and the fluttering ribbons blind me; 
But still I beat as I travel the town, 
And still the recruits come manfully down, 
And the march grows long behind me. 

In time to the drum the feet fall steady, 
The feet fall steady and firm to hear, 
And we cry, as we march, that the goal is near, 
For all men are heroes already! 



[53] 



THE OLD WORLD MOANS AND 
TOPES— 1871 

Intellectually and politically, the period 
when this poem was written was for all 
Europe a time of restlessness. The war of 
1870 had upset the old order of things in con- 
tinental affairs, and religious belief had, for 
many, not as yet reconciled itself to the dis- 
turbing influence of the new thought of Dar- 
win and Spencer. In the present poem Stev- 
enson offers as a prescription to cure the ills 
of the time a renewed faith in the nobility of 
mankind itself, thus coming into accord with 
the conviction of that ruggedly fine old Scots- 
man to whom, politically, he was opposed, but 
who still so greatly aroused his admiration. 
For was it not Stevenson's compatriot, Thom- 
as Carlyle, who said: "There is one godlike 
thing, the essence of all that ever was or ever 
will be godlike in this world: the veneration 
done to Human Worth by the hearts of men." 



[54] 



THE OLD WORLD MOANS AND 
TOPES 

The old world moans and topes, 

Is restless and ill at ease; 
And the old-world politicians 

Prescribe for the new disease. 

I have stooped my head to listen 
(Its voice is far from strong) 1 

For the burthen of its moanings 
As it topes all night long. 

I have watched a patient vigil 

Beside its fever bed, 
And I think that I can tell you 

The burthen of what it said: — 

"As sick folk long for morning 

And long for night again, 
So long for noble objects 

The hearts of noble men. 

"They long and grope about them, 
With feverish hands they grope 

1 In a hand, written much later, Stevenson penciled three 
exclamation marks after this line, then added, "Bully for you, 
L. Stevenson!" 

[55] 



For objects of endeavour, 
And exercise for hope. 

"And they shall be our heroes 

And be our Avatar, 
Who shall either reach the objects 

Or tell us what they are." 



[56] 



I AM LIKE ONE THAT HAS SAT 
ALONE— 1 871 

The influence of Heine — an influence we 
have previously had occasion to comment up- 
on — is again evident in these verses written 
at Swanston, where the poet likens the re- 
arising of hopeful life after a period of de- 
jection to a glorious sunset after a day of storm 
and gloom. 

I AM LIKE ONE THAT HAS SAT 
ALONE 

I am like one that has sat alone 

All day on a level plain, 
With drooping head and trailing arms 

In a ceaseless pour of rain — 

With drooping head and nerveless arms 
On the moorland flat and gray, 

Till the clouds were severed suddenly 
About the end of day; 

And the purple fringes of the rain 

Rose o'er the scarlet west, 
And the birds sang in the soddened furze, 

And my heart sang in my breast. 

[57] 



I SIT UP HERE AT MIDNIGHT 

1871-1872 

Here again, were it not for the word "Inch- 
cape"' in the third stanza, we should at first 
glance feel almost convinced that the present 
verses are a translation from Heine, so closely 
both in style and in spirit does the Scottish 
poet follow the German master. "Inch," 
meaning an island, is so unmistakably an in- 
dex of Scottish local nomenclature that it 
saves us the trouble of going through the 
works of Heine to find the supposed original; 
but we can never come upon a more convinc- 
ing evidence of the intensity of Stevenson's 
study of the great German lyrist. The metre 
is the one that Heine most used ; the simplicity 
of the sentences is in his vein, only one simile 
in the first stanza and one metaphor in the 
fifth interrupting the sheer directness of de- 
scription. And if this were truly a Stevenson 
poem, and not a Heine-Stevenson poem, the 
subject would be treated in a more personal 
manner, and would lack the dramatic objec- 
tivity which is so often a striking element in 
Heine's poems of this nature. Then, at the 

[58] 



end, how altogether Heine the closing line, 
"The foolish fisher woman!" Stevenson never 
would have thought of calling her that, unless 
he were unconsciously writing with Heine's 
mind. After picturing two scenes — the skip- 
per husband in the storm, and the terrified 
wife at home — after arousing our sympathy 
for a loving woman in anguish, Heine alone, 
of all poets it would seem, would have iron- 
ically inwoven the note of tenderness in the 
"foolish fisherwoman," mocking himself and 
his own experiences, in thus regarding, with 
a wry smile of ridiculing pity, the misery of 
human love. 

I SIT UP HERE AT MIDNIGHT 

I sit up here at midnight, 

The wind is in the street, 
The rain besieges the windows 

Like the sound of many feet. 

I see the street lamps flicker, 

I see them wink and fail; 
The streets are wet and empty, 

It blows an easterly gale. 

[59] 



Some think of the fisher skipper 
Beyond the Inchcape stone; 

But I of the fisher woman 
That lies at home alone. 

She raises herself on her elbow 
And watches the firelit floor; 

Her eyes are bright with terror, 
Her heart beats fast and sore. 

Between the roar of the flurries, 
When the tempest holds its breath, 

She holds her breathing also — 
It is all as still as death. 

She can hear the cinders dropping, 
The cat that purrs in its sleep — 

The foolish fisher woman! 
Her heart is on the deep. 



[60] 



LINK YOUR ARM IN MINE, MY LAD 

1872 

While this poem is, as its title indicates, a 
song doubtless sung by Stevenson and his stu- 
dent companions as they quaffed their glasses 
in the Edinburgh winter of 1871-1872, it is 
possible that the "lad" who appears in the first 
line may have been, not any companion in gen- 
eral, but his cousin, the artist and critic of art, 
Robert Alan Stevenson. The point of view 
here shown as to the value of endeavor and 
the relative unimportance of the individual's 
place in the social scheme, is one that both in 
verse and in conversation frequently appears 
in the exchange of thoughts between the two 
cousins. However this may be, the poem con- 
sidered merely as a student song presents so 
unusual a juxtaposition of ideas as to render it 
unique. If, for a moment, we omit consider- 
ation of the chorus, and study the first four 
stanzas, we find Stevenson closely following the 
model of student drinking songs such as may 
be read by the score in the anthology of John 
Addington Symonds. The linking of the 
arms of boon companions, the animadversions 

[61] 



against Fortune, the advice deeply to drain 
the cheering glass, the carefree wish that 

Devil take Posterity 

And present people too, lad! 

are all in the vein of convivial youth, and 
might be a translation from the Latin of me- 
diaeval days. With such a beginning, we 
might assuredly expect a ringing chorus with 
the glowing bowl for its theme; but instead, 
we have in the chorus itself the unadulterated 
note of human fraternity, and the only specific 
suggestion as to conduct has to do, not with 
the cheer of wine, but with fraternal cheer in 
the larger sense. And similarly, in the con- 
cluding stanzas, immediately following the 
adjuration to the devil to take both posterity 
and the present, an appeal implying the fu- 
tility of all endeavor, the poet devotes himself 
to the thought of the value of work. There 
never was a more curious revelation in a 
drinking song, of cross currents where tend- 
encies towards the easy and the pleasant, the 
serious and the arduous, are, in their conjunc- 
tion, expressed in a manner so revelatory of 
the inner life of the writer. 

[62] 



LINK YOUR ARM IN MINE, MY LAD 

Link your arm in mine, my lad — 

You and I together, 
You and I and all the rest 

Shall face the winter weather. 

Chorus 
Some to good, and some to harm, 
Some to cheer the others, 
All the world goes arm in arm, 
And all the men are brothers. 

Fortune kicks us here and there, 

Small our role in life, lad. 
Better paltry peace, howe'er, 

Than hero-laurelled strife, lad. 

While there's liquor to be had, 

Deeply drain the bickers. 
Ocean plays at marbles, lad, 

With men of war for knickers. 

Who will ever hear of me? 

Who will hear of you, lad? 
Devil take posterity 

And present people too, lad! 

[6 3 ] 



I have work enough to do, 
Strength enough to do it — 

I have work and so have you, 
So put your shoulder to it! 

Some do half that I can do, 
Some can do the double, 

Some must rule for me and you, 
To save ourselves the trouble! 

Who would envy yonder man 

Decorated thus, lad? 
We are workingmen for him, 

And he's an earl for us, lad! 



[6 4 ] 



I HAVE A FRIEND; I HAVE A STORY 
(.872?) 

While Stevenson's remarkable poem begin- 
ning "God Gave to Me a Child In Part" first 
published in the Bibliophile edition, was 
placed in the section entitled "Poems of Un- 
certain Date," the suggestion was made that 
it belonged to the early seventies. It was dur- 
ing that same period (presumably 1872, 
though possibly 1871) that the present kin- 
dred poem was doubtless written. The in- 
ternal evidence is too strong for any other as- 
sumption, since there was apparently only one 
woman in Stevenson's life who, although he 
was devoted to her, might yet have had reason 
to hate him. We know her merely as 
"Claire," the name inscribed marginally by 
Stevenson on the manuscript of "Swallows 
Travel To and Fro," — verses which in 1873 
were composed with her in mind. She was 
the Edinburgh girl who was in all probabil- 
ity the prospective mother of that unborn 
child lamented by Stevenson in the poem, 
"God Gave To Me a Child in Part," refer- 
red to above. The depth of his affection for 

[6s] 



her is shown in many of his early lyrics; but 
when (we must believe because of parental 
objection), he was forced to break with this 
girl whose status and antecedents may have 
justified his family's opposition, and when in 
1872 he was sent by his parents to the conti- 
nent, her love may well have changed to the 
hatred prophesied in the closing lines of the 
following verses. 

Analyzing the poem from the point of view 
here taken we are confronted in the first 
stanza with a quarrel between the lovers. It 
is barely possible that a misunderstanding, 
due to some cause no longer ascertainable, 
led to the break in relations; but far more 
probably the approaching separation was the 
cause of a scene in which Stevenson was up- 
braided and misjudged. The second stanza 
leads to the surmise that although agreeing to 
a temporary separation Stevenson had 
promised loyalty to the girl if she would re- 
main true to him. In the third stanza, with 
the passionate expression of his love for her, 
appears one of those sentences that belong 
only to his early days -even then very rarely, 
for later in life he never attributed the baf- 

[66] 



fling cruelty of existence to God. The phrase 
he used is that of a desperate mood; and how 
little hope he had of regaining the affection 
of his beloved is set forth in the last line of the 
closing stanza where he says, "A while, and 
she will only hate." 



[6 7 ] 



I HAVE A FRIEND; I HAVE A STORY 

I have a friend; I have a story; 

I have a life that's hard to live; 
I love; my love is all my glory; 

I have been hurt and I forgive. 

I have a friend; none could be better; 

I stake my heart upon my friend! 
I love; I trust her to the letter; 

Will she deceive me in the end? 

She is my love, my life, my jewel; 

My hope, my star, my dear delight. 
God! but the ways of God are cruel, — 

That love should bow the knee to spite! 

She loves, she hates, — a foul alliance! 

One King shall rule in one estate. 
I only love; 'tis all my science; 

A while, and she will only hate. 



[68] 



HOPES— 1872 

In its subject matter — its insistence on the 
"hopeful heart" — the kinship of these verses 
with so many others of Stevenson's is obvious; 
but both the date and the place of this compo- 
sition have a rather special interest, inasmuch 
as 1 87 1, that vital year when turbulent 
thoughts and emotions first calmed down suffi- 
ciently to permit a clear outlook upon life, has 
now been left behind. Scotland is replaced by 
Germany, and at Frankfort, in 1872, we find 
Stevenson writing in that vein of determined 
hope which was thenceforth to be his great- 
est source of strength. It is perhaps the only 
poem that he wrote in Germany, and one won- 
ders whether the words in his autograph at 
the bottom of the manuscript and in the Ger- 
man script, recording that "Today for the 
first time I spoke to Elise," establish so pleas- 
ant a meeting with some attractive young girl 
as to suggest an additional reason for the 
cheerful tenor of the poem. 

From the first to the last stanza Stevenson 
adheres to a line of imagery effective in itself, 
and characteristic of the introspective youth 

[69] 



whose thoughts and hopes are so much a part 
of his daily life as to take on the aspect of per- 
sonified companions. In such verses as "And 
new hopes whisper sweetly new delight," and 
"A troop of shouting hopes keep step with 
me," he gives voice and form to these crea- 
tures of the mind, in a manner that appealing- 
ly intensifies our realization of the intimate 
communion between the poet and his faithful 
troop of thoughts and aspirations. 

HOPES 

Tho' day by day old hopes depart, 

Yet other hopes arise 
If still we bear a hopeful heart 

And forward-looking eyes. 

Of all that entered hand in hand 
With me the dusty plains — 
Look round! — not one remains, 

Not one remains of all the jovial band. 

Some fell behind, some hastened on; 

Some, scattered far and wide, 

Sought lands on every side; 
One way or other, all the band are gone. 

[70] 



Yes, all are gone; and yet, at night, 

New objects of desire 

People the sunken fire 
And new hopes whisper sweetly new delight; 

And still, flush-faced, new goals I see, 

New finger-posts I find, 

And still thro' rain and wind 
A troop of shouting hopes keep step with me. 

Tho' day by day old hopes depart, 

Yet other hopes arise 
If still we bear a hopeful heart 

And forward-looking eyes. 



[713 



TO A YOUTH— 1872 

The "youth" to whom this poem was 
written, probably in 1872, was almost certain- 
ly Stevenson's cousin "Bob," who was later to 
become noted in fields of art and art criticism. 
Robert Louis and Robert Alan Stevenson 
had much in common, both in taste and tem- 
perament; and of his elder cousin, Steven- 
son, in a letter to Sidney Colvin, written in 
January 1874, said: "He has all the same ele- 
ments of character that I have: no two people 
were ever more alike, only that the world has 
gone more unfortunately for him, although 
more evenly." The two cousins exchanged 
verses, counsels and encouragement; and the 
present poem shows the younger and more 
famous of the pair offering his friend a mes- 
sage of cheer, based on the philosophy of the 
all-sufficing value of courageous endeavor. 

TO A YOUTH 

See, with strong heart O youth, the change 
Of mood and season in thy breast. 
The intrepid soul that dares the wider range 
Shall find securer rest. 

[72] 






To <% <Afi^AM- 



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•> • »' 



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<HL - 



JXuavo l^ A <U^.f(jL (XArxrujk. f /QAA4/1+.* ~to -W^t. 

rVelT y>juZ& <^oM+ l t*A.*/u . 



The variable moods they breed 
Are but as April sun and shower, 
That only seem to hinder — truly speed 
Against the harvest hour. 

Thy net in all rough waters cast, 

In all fair pasturelands rejoice, 

Thee shall such wealth of trials lead at last 

To thy true home of choice. 

So shalt thou grow, O youth, at length 
Strong in endeavor, strong to bear 
As having all things borne, thy lease of 

strength 
Not perishable hair. 

Not the frail tenement of health, 

The uneasy mail of stoic pride 

(A Nessus-shirt indeed!) the veer of wealth 

In strong continual tide. 

Not these, but in the constant heart, 
That having all ways tried, at last 
Holds, stout and patient, to the eternal chart, 
Well tested in the past. 

O, more than garlands for our heads, 
Than drum and trumpet sounding loud, 

[73] 



As the long line of fluttering banners threads 
The many-coloured crowd; 

That sense of progress won with ease, 
Of unconstrained advance in both, 
Of the full circle finished — such as trees 
Feel in their own free growth. 

So shall thy life to plains below, 
O not unworthy of the crown! 
Equal and pure, by lives yet purer, flow 
Companionably down. 



[74] 



HERE HE COMES, BIG WITH 
STATISTICS— 1874 

Stevenson took his law studies seriously 
enough to get his degree as Advocate after 
creditably passing his examinations for the 
Bar in 1875; but in the course of taking notes 
at law lectures he would now and then in- 
dulge in verse as a pastime; and the present 
lines are a very amusing example of his skill 
in such unacademic performances. We do not 
know the name of the professor who is here 
lampooned, but we do know the type, and can 
well understand Stevenson's contemptuous 
pity so deftly worded in the last two lines. 

HERE HE COMES, BIG WITH 
STATISTICS 

Here he comes, big with statistics, 
Troubled and sharp about fac's. 

He has heap of the Form that is thinkable — 
The stuff that is feeling, he lacks. 

Do you envy this whiskered absurdity, 

With pince-nez and clerical tie? 
Poor fellow, he's blind of a sympathy! 

I'd rather be blind of an eye. 

[75] 



SIT DOON BY ME, MY CANTY 
FREEND— 1874 

This drinking song in the Scots dialect is 
associated with those convivial nights when 
Stevenson, with some of his fellow students, 
frequented the taverns of Edinburgh after 
days generally spent in serious study. It is, 
of course, the characteristic student drinking 
song of all ages, with the insistence on the 
value of tasting the delights of wine, especial- 
ly in view of the shortness of life. 



SIT DOON BY ME, MY CANTY 
FREEND 

Sit doon by me, my canty freend, 
Sit doon, an' snuff the licht! 

A boll 0' bear 's in ilka glass 
Ye'se drink wi' me the nichtl 

Chorus 
Let preachers prate o' soberness 

An' brand us ripe for doom, 
Yet still we'll lo'e the brimmin' glass, 

And still we'll hate the toom. 

[76] 



There's fire an' life in ilka glass, 
There's blythesomness an' cheer, 

There's thirst an' what'll slocken it, 
There's love and laughter here. 

O mirk an' black the lee lang gate 
That we maun gang the nicht, 

But aye we'll pass the brimmin' glass 
An' aye we'll snuff the licht. 

We'll draw the closer roond the fire 

And aye the closer get. 
Without, the ways may thaw or freeze, 

Within we're roarin' wet! 



[77] 



IN AUTUMN WHEN THE WOODS 
ARE RED— 1875 

The romantic attachment which runs 
through so much of his verse in the early 
seventies was not much more than a senti- 
mental memory for Stevenson, when, in 1875, 
in the company of Walter Simpson he was 
spending some weeks in France. While early 
joys are referred to as gone, "A touch of April 
not yet dead," followed by the picture of 
Cupid hunting, shows Stevenson's thoughts 
turning towards past days in Edinburgh. Yet 
less on the personal side, than as an attempt 
at French forms of verse, is this poem de- 
serving of special comment. Those days in 
France, when Stevenson first came into close 
contact with French authors, ancient and 
modern, left their valuable impress on his 
style. English and Scotch literature he al- 
ready knew well, and he had sat at the feet of 
the German masters, Goethe and Heine; but 
not until the date of this poem was his interest 
marked in French form, and to this continu- 
ing interest and expanding study is doubtless 
due, to no small extent, Stevenson's stylistic 
development. 

[78] 



IN AUTUMN WHEN THE WOODS 
ARE RED 

In autumn when the woods are red 

And skies are gray and clear, 

The sportsmen seek the wild fowls' bed 

Or follow down the deer; 

And Cupid hunts by haugh and head, 

By riverside and mere. 

I walk, not seeing where I tread 

And keep my heart with fear. 

Sir, have an eye, on where you tread 

And keep your heart with fear, 

For something lingers here; 

A touch of April not yet dead, 

In Autumn when the woods are red 

And skies are gray and clear. 



[79] 



THE LOOK OF DEATH IS BOTH 
SEVERE AND MILD— 1875 

In commenting, in the previously published 
Bibliophile edition of Stevenson's poems, on 
the poem beginning — 

Death, to the dead forevermore, 

A King, a God, the last and best of friends, 

the editor fell into an error in calling it the 
earliest of the poems devoted exclusively to 
the theme of Death "as the ultimate and ful- 
filling peace." It was indeed the earliest of 
such published poems, but the present verses, 
reflecting the same point of view, antedate 
the others by at least a brief time, evidence of 
which is found in the original draft of the 
previously published poem, where Stevenson 
used the line, "And comfortably welcomes 
weary feet," one of the best verses in the pres- 
ent rondeau. 

The opening stanza of this poem gives Stev- 
enson's most successful presentation of his con- 
ception of Death. In the adjective "severe" 
is the intimation of the joys of life, forgotten 
when death appears; while in the antithetical 
adjective "mild," Death is shorn of its terror. 

[80] 



THE LOOK OF DEATH IS BOTH 
SEVERE AND MILD 

The look of Death is both severe and mild, 
And all the words of Death are grave and 

sweet; 
He holds ajar the door of his retreat; 
The hermitage of life, it may be styled; 
He pardons sinners, cleanses the defiled, 
And comfortably welcomes weary feet. 
The look of Death is both severe and mild, 
And all the words of Death are grave and 

sweet. 

And you that have been loving pleasure wild, 
Long known the sins and sorrows of the street, 
Lift up your eyes and see, Death waits to 

greet, 
As a kind parent a repentant child. 

The bugle sounds the muster roll, 
The blacksmith blows the roaring coal ; 
The look of Death is both severe and mild, 
And all the words of Death are grave and 
sweet. 



[81] 



HER NAME IS AS A WORD OF OLD 
ROMANCE— 1875 

This rondeau may very possibly have been 
written by Stevenson with Mrs. Sitwell in 
mind. That talented woman, who later be- 
came the wife of Sidney Colvin, one of the 
nearest and most loyal of all of Stevenson's 
friends, was long the recipient of Stevenson's 
confidences, and among the persons whom he 
most admired. 



[82] 



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HER NAME IS AS A WORD OF OLD 
ROMANCE 

Her name is as a word of old romance 
That thrills a careless reader out of sleep. 
Love and old art, and all things pure and deep 
Attend on her to honour her advance, — 
The brave old wars where bearded heroes 

prance, 
The courtly mien that private virtues keep, — 
Her name is as a word of old romance. 
Peer has she none in England or in France, 
So well she knows to rouse dull souls [from 

sleep] 
So deftly can she comfort those that weep 
And put kind thought and comfort in a glance. 
Her name is like a [word of old romance.] 



t8 3 ] 



LIGHT AS MY HEART WAS LONG 
AGO— 1875 

The same form shown in the verses begin- 
ning, "In Autumn When the Woods are 
Red," is followed here in a poem that comes 
close to the spirit of some of Francois Villon's 
lyrics. Stevenson's story, "A Lodging for the 
Night," based on Villon's life, and his essay 
on that inspired and interesting reprobate, are 
among his most sympathetic works in the 
fields of the short story and of criticism. And 
it is curious to reflect that while Thoreau, the 
ascetic New Englander, was the American to 
whom Stevenson most instinctively reacted, 
the licentious Villon was, we fancy, his favor- 
ite hero in French literature. 

But an even more interesting thought that 
arises from the present verses and from those 
that belong to their little group of the year 
1875, is that just as Stevenson's apprenticeship 
as a man of letters in Scotland began with at- 
tempts at verse writing, so similarly when, on 
the continent, he sought to improve his work- 
manship by the study of French forms, it was 
to poetry that he first turned, and in poetry 
that he continued his training. 

[84] 



LIGHT AS MY HEART WAS LONG 
AGO 

Light as my heart was long ago, 

Now it is heavy enough ; 

Now that the weather is rough, 

Now that the loud winds come and go, 

Winter is here with hail and snow, 

Winter is sorry and gruff. 

Light as last year's snow, 

Where is my love? I do not know; 

Life is a pitiful stuff, 

Out with it — out with the snuff! 

This is the sum of all I know, 

Light as my heart was long ago. 



[8 S ] 



GATHER YE ROSES WHILE YE MAY 

1875 

This is another one of Stevenson's poems 
written in France, and a charming bit of verse 
experimentation, where Stevenson weaves the 
famous lines of Robert Herrick into a more 
concrete form of old French poetry. 

GATHER YE ROSES WHILE YE MAY 

Gather ye roses while ye may, 

Old time is still a-flying; 
A world where beauty fleets away 

Is no world for denying. 
Come lads and lasses, fall to play 

Lose no more time in sighing. 

The very flowers you pluck today, 

Tomorrow will be dying; 

And all the flowers are crying, 
And all the leaves have tongues to say, — 
Gather ye roses while ye may. 



[86] 



SINCE I AM SWORN TO LIVE MY 
LIFE— 1875 

Of all the poems belonging to the little 
group of experimentations in the French style 
these verses, written at Nemours, are the most 
successful in their succinct combination of the 
French spirit and of Stevenson's own attitude 
towards life, especially in his youth. Not 
only in form, but likewise in the phrase drawn 
from the terminology of duelling, or in such 
an adverb as "gaily,"' we have the French 
animation, while such lines as "I bear a ban- 
ner in the strife," and "prudence brawling in 
the mart," are intimately akin to earlier verses 
written in Scotland. Then, too, if there is one 
statement that can always incontrovertibly be 
made of Stevenson, it is, that he was sworn to 
lead his life, for all his weakness in health, 
and his minor weaknesses in character, and 
that he always carried through, at whatever 
cost, his main purposes, whether, as in mak- 
ing — against the wishes of his father — liter- 
ature his profession, or, against the advice of 
all his friends, in setting forth with little 
strength and less money on the great adven- 
ture of his marriage. 

[87] 



SINCE I AM SWORN TO LIVE MY 
LIFE 

Since I am sworn to live my life, 
And not to keep an easy heart, 
Some men may sit and drink apart, — 
I bear a banner in the strife. 

Some can take quiet thought to wife, — 
I am all day at tierce and carte; 
Since I am sworn to live my life 
And not to keep an easy heart. 

I follow gaily to the fife, 
Leave wisdom bowed above a chart 
And prudence brawling in the mart, 
And dare misfortune to the knife, 
Since I am sworn to live my life. 



[88] 



POEM FOR A CLASS RE-UNION- 1875 

Mr. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, himself 
an author and a man described as charming in 
his personality, was the Master referred to in 
the third line of this poem. It was at his pri- 
vate school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, 
that Stevenson during the years 1864- 1867 had 
formed the friendships that led him, some 
years later, to attend the class re-union for 
which this poem was written. 

POEM FOR A CLASS RE-UNION 

Whether we like it, or don't, 

There's a sort of bond in the fact 
That we all by one master were taught, 

By one master were bullied and whackt. 
And now all the more when we see 

Our class in so shrunken a state 
And we, who were seventy-two, 

Diminished to seven or eight. 

One has been married, and one 

Has taken to letters for bread; 
Several are over the seas; 

And some I imagine are dead. 

[89] 



And that is the reason, you see, 

Why, as I have the honour to state, 

We, who were seventy-two, 
Are now only seven or eight. 

One took to heretical views, 

And one, they inform me, to drink; 
Some construct fortunes in trade, 

Some starve in professions, I think. 
But one way or other, alas! 

Through the culpable action of Fate 
We, who were seventy-two 

Are now shrunken to seven or eight. 

So, whether we like it or not, 

Let us own there's a bond in the past, 
And, since we were playmates at school, 

Continue good friends to the last. 
The roll-book is closed in the room, 

The clackan is gone with the slate, 
We, who were seventy-two 

Are now only seven or eight. 

We shall never, our books on our back, 
Trudge off in the morning again, 

To the slide at the janitor's door, 
By the ambush of rods in the lane. 

[90] 



We shall never be sent for the tawse, 
Nor lose places for coming too late; 

We shall never be seventy-two, 
Who now are but seven or eight! 

We shall never have pennies for lunch, 

We shall never be strapped by Maclean, 
We shall never take gentlemen down, 

Nor ever be schoolboys again. 
But still for the sake of the past, 

For the love of the days of lang syne 
The remnant of seventy-two 

Shall rally together to dine. 



[91] 



I SAW RED EVENING THROUGH 

THE RAIN— 1875 

This Edinburgh poem of the year 1875 is 
another of an unhappy mood, when even the 
memory of delight has in it a bitter touch. 
The verses are an original draft, showing the 
writer groping after the finished form, and 
thus the second and fourth stanzas should be 
regarded as varying attempts to phrase the 
same emotion, rather than as separate finished 
stanzas of a completed poem. 

In the final verse we have again, in the 
phrase, "the forward way," an indication of 
Stevenson's characteristic insistence upon the 
value, however difficult the circumstances of 
the moment, of continuing towards the goal. 

I SAW RED EVENING THROUGH 
THE RAIN 

I saw red evening through the rain 
Lower above the steaming plain; 
I heard the hour strike small and still, 
From the black belfry on the hill. 

Thought is driven out of doors tonight 
By bitter memory of delight; 

[92] 



The sharp constraint of finger tips, 
Or the shuddering touch of lips. 

I heard the hour strike small and still, 
From the black belfry on the hill. 
Behind me I could still look down 
On the outspread monstrous town. 

The sharp constraint of finger tips, 
Or the shuddering touch of lips, 
And all old memories of delight 
Crowd upon my soul tonight. 

Behind me I could still look down 
On the outspread feverish town; 
But before me, still and grey, 
And lonely was the forward way. 



[93] 



LAST NIGHT WE HAD A THUNDER- 
STORM IN STYLE— 1875 

This draft of a rondeau written in France 
in the summer of 1875, seems to be the only 
one of Stevenson's poems where he patently 
attempts to incorporate into his verses the 
spirit of Voltaire. The conception of the 
thunder as the voice of God is an old one, and 
the thunderbolts of Jove echo through Greek 
and Roman literature; but it has remained for 
Stevenson, in ironic mood, lying in bed "with 
a Voltairean smile," and while others are 
praying — to think of the thunder as the noise 
made by God falling down a flight of stairs. 
It is the most daring bit of ridiculous imagery 
in all his writings, and however greatly some 
may be shocked thereby, its success can hardly 
be questioned in view of its attainment of its 
object — the smile that it almost inevitably 
arouses. 



[94] 



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LAST NIGHT WE HAD A THUNDER- 
STORM IN STYLE 

Last night we had a thunderstorm in style. 
The wild lightning streaked the airs, 
As though my God fell down a pair of stairs. 
The thunder boomed and bounded all the 

while; 
All cried and sat by waterside and stile, — 
To mop our brow had been our chief of cares. 
I lay in bed with a Voltairean smile, 
The terror of good, simple guilty pairs, 
And made this rondeau in ironic style. 
Last night we had a thunderstorm in style. 

Our God the Father fell down stairs, 

The stark blue lightning went its flight the 

while, 
The very rain you might have heard a mile, — 
The strenuous faithful buckled to their 

prayers. 



[95] 



O LADY FAIR AND SWEET— 1875 

In this poem, another of Stevenson's ron- 
deau experiments, does he again address the 
girl who is the subject of so many of his earlier 
lyrics? If so, with the succeeding poem, "If I 
had wings, my lady, like a dove," it forms a 
pair wherein for the first time she is addressed 
as "My Lady," a form of appellation in conso- 
nance with the formal nature of the old 
French poetry that was at the time providing 
Stevenson with models. The two poems, as 
their references to "winter air" and "blinding 
sleet" indicate, were presumably written in 
the winter months of 1875, after Stevenson's 
return from France, and the "noisy street," 
and "the doleful city row," point to Edin- 
burgh. 

O LADY FAIR AND SWEET 

O lady fair and sweet 

Arise and let us go 

Where comes not rain or snow, 

Excess of cold or heat, 

To find a still retreat 

By willowy valleys low 

[96] 



Where silent rivers flow. 
There let us turn our feet 
O lady fair and sweet, — 
Far from the noisy street, 
The doleful city row, 
Far from the grimy street, 
Where in the evening glow 
The summer swallows meet, 
The quiet mowers mow. 
Arise and let us go, 
O lady fair and sweet, 
For here the loud winds blow, 
Here drifts the blinding sleet. 



[97] 



IF I HAD WINGS, MY LADY, LIKE A 
DOVE— 1875 

This is one of the most successful results of 
Stevenson's studies in French verse, and none 
the less interesting in that it gives indication 
of the author's intimate knowledge of the sev- 
enteenth century English poets. Such senten- 
ces as "To kiss the sweet disparting of her hair," 
and "spend upon her lips my all of breath" 
bring up memories of Herrick, Marvell and 
Waller; and the whole argument of what he 
would do, if he were a dove, is an argument 
proper to the pages of that quaint and delight- 
ful group of English lyric writers. 

IF I HAD WINGS, MY LADY, LIKE A 
DOVE 

If I had wings, my lady, like a dove 

I should not linger here, 
But through the winter air toward my love, 

Fly swift toward my love, my fair, 
If I had wings, my lady, like a dove. 

If I had wings, my lady, like a dove, 
And knew the secrets of the air, 

[98] 



I should be gone, my lady, to my love, 

To kiss the sweet disparting of her hair, 
If I had wings, my lady, like a dove. 

If I had wings, my lady, like a dove, 
This hour should see my soul at rest, 

Should see me safe, my lady, with my love, 
To kiss the sweet division of her breast, 

If I had wings, my lady, like a dove. 

For all is sweet, my lady, in my love; 

Sweet hair, sweet breast and sweeter eyes 
That draw my soul, my lady, like a dove 

Drawn southward by the shining of the 
skies ; 
For all is sweet, my lady, in my love. 

If I could die, my lady, with my love, 
Die, mouth to mouth, a splendid death, 

I should take wing, my lady, like a dove, 
To spend upon her lips my all of breath, 

If I could die, my lady, with my love. 



[99] 



EH, MAN HENLEY, YOU'RE A DON! 

1875 

Discussion has been frequent upon Henley's 
attitude towards the Stevenson of later life, 
and the over-idealization of the Stevenson of 
posthumous fame. In the earlier days of 
their acquaintance, when both were strug- 
gling young poets, a very sympathetic friend- 
ship existed between them and their minds 
caught fire from the sparks of each other's 
conversations. Even their faults of tempera- 
ment and character brought them closer to- 
gether. It was only after the public began to 
set Stevenson on too high a pedestal of virtue 
that Henley's reaction found voice in expostu- 
lation and regret. 

Here, in verses written several years before 
this friendship, from the point of view of 
literature, reached its consummation in vari- 
ous plays of collaboration, we have a witty 
and familiar little poem, full of all the tang 
of the vernacular, and of Stevenson's admira- 
tion for Henley; full, too, of encouragement. 
But in the retrospect, there is a touch of 
pathos in Stevenson's prophecy, never to be 
fulfilled, of the time when the whole world 
[ 100] 



would cheer on his friend Henley. Henley 
was a born poet, and it is not to be wondered 
that he was able — to use Stevenson's term — 
to spit out admirable lines, lines whose wis- 
dom entitled him to the appellation of "Don." 
But life was cruel to Henley; the world never 
"patted" his shoulders, as towards the end it 
patted the shoulders of Stevenson, and these 
verses, thus faulty in prophecy, have their 
value mainly as a bright jeu d' esprit dating 
from the younger days of the two men. 

EH, MAN HENLEY, YOU'RE A DON! 

Eh, man Henley, you're a Don! 
Man, but you're a deevil at it! 
This ye made an hour agone — 
Tht! — like that — as tho ye'd spat it, — 
Eh, man Henley. 

Better days will come anon 

When you'll have your shoulders pattit, 

And the whole round world, odd rat it! 

Will cry out to cheer you on; 

Eh, man Henley, you're a Don! 



[IOI] 



ALL NIGHT THROUGH, RAVES OR 
BROODS— 1876 

We have already called attention to the fact 
that the winter of 1876 was a period of such 
melancholy brooding for Stevenson, that he 
lacked the energy even for correspondence, 
two or three cheerless letters being the sum 
total of his efforts of that kind; while two 
poems of that winter, to be found in the Bib- 
liophile edition of 1916, are among the most 
despondent that came from his pen. 

The present poem belongs to the same 
month, March, as the pair just mentioned, and 
it was presumably written on the same day as 
the short poem entitled "Soon Our Friends 
Perish." The evidence for this is furnished 
by Stevenson's marginal comment on the pre- 
viously published manuscript where, after 
asking why God has deserted him, he adds: 
"And why does the damned wind rave in my 
ears?" In the present poem the lines occur — 

All night through, raves or broods 
The fitful wind among the woods — 

the same wind, presumably, as raved on that 
same night. But, as we so often find in Stev- 

[ 102] 



enson, even in his darkest moments, he here 
goes beyond the pessimism of the other poem, 
and lets his fancy stray into more hopeful 
fields of memory. 

The verses are a first and never-to-be per- 
fected draft, and their incompletion affords 
an added testimony of the unstrung condition 
of the poet's mind. 

ALL NIGHT THROUGH, RAVES OR 
BROODS 

All night through, raves or broods 
The fitful wind among the woods; 
All night through, hark! the rain 
Beats upon the window pane. 

And still my heart is far away, 

Still dwells in many a bygone day, 

And still follows hope with [rainbow wing] 

Adown the golden ways of spring. 

In many a wood my fancy strays, 
In many unforgotten Mays, 
And still I feel the wandering — 
[Manuscript breaks off here.] 

[ 103] 



THE RAIN IS OVER AND DONE 
(1876?) 

The handwriting and context of these 
verses point to the winter of 1876, and the 
poem is emphatically in consonance with the 
moods of those months when Stevenson's out- 
look on life was darkest. The poem indicates 
that his despondency was partly due to the 
recognition of the lessening of his love for the 
Edinburgh girl who had aroused the great 
passion of his early manhood. 

THE RAIN IS OVER AND DONE 

The rain is over and done; 
I am aweary, dear, of love; 
I look below and look above, 
On russet maiden, rustling dame, 
And love's so slow and time so long, 
And hearts and eyes so blindly wrong, 
I am half weary of my love, 

And pray that life were done. 



[ 104] 



THERE WHERE THE LAND OF 
LOVE— 1876 

As the winter of 1876 gave way to spring, 
Stevenson's spirits greatly improved. His 
letters to friends were far more numerous in 
the second half of that year than in the first 
half, and the charm of Nature reasserted its 
power over his spirits. In the present frag- 
mentary poem, we find the first lyric indica- 
tion of the re-appearance of Nature's appeal, 
though even here, in the comment in his auto- 
graph where the briefness of life is imaged 
forth as a flash between the past and the fu- 
ture, the poet is seen as still under the sway 
of the sombre thoughts that have darkened his 
winter. 

THERE WHERE THE LAND OF 
LOVE 

There where the land of love, 
Grown about by fragrant bushes, 
Sunken in a winding valley, 
Where the clear winds blow 
And the shadows come and go, 
And the cattle stand and low 

[105] 



And the sheep bells and the linnets 
Sing and tinkle musically. 
Between the past and the future, 
Those two black infinities 

Between which our brief life 
Flashes a moment and goes out. 



[106] 



LOVE IS THE VERY HEART OF 
SPRING— 1876 

In foregoing pages it has been shown how, 
in 1875, while in France, Stevenson had be- 
come interested in forms of poetry where the 
element of the refrain comes musically into 
play. The present verses are his most sustained 
attempt at this kind of poetry, and some may 
feel that the manner wherein he introduces a 
few lines in constant repetition is so tuneful 
that the poem becomes a really successful 
paean of love and springtime. 



LOVE IS THE VERY HEART OF 
SPRING 

Love is the very heart of spring; 

Flocks fall to loving on the lea 
And wildfowl love upon the wing, 

When spring first enters like a sea. 

When spring first enters like a sea 

Into the heart of everything, 
Bestir yourselves religiously, 

Incense before love's altar bring. 

[107] 



Incense before love's altar bring, 

Flowers from the flowering hawthorn tree, 
Flowers from the margin of the spring, 

For all the flowers are sweet to see. 

Love is the very heart of spring; 

When spring first enters like a sea 
Incense before love's altar bring, 

And flowers while flowers are sweet to see. 

Bring flowers while flowers are sweet to see; 

Love is almighty, love's a King, 
Incense before love's altar bring, 

Incense before love's altar bring. 

Love's gifts are generous and free 
When spring first enters like a sea; 

When spring first enters like a sea, 
The birds are all inspired to sing. 

Love is the very heart of spring, 
The birds are all inspired to sing, 

Love's gifts are generous and free; 
Love is almighty, love's a King. 



[108] 



AT MORNING ON THE GARDEN 

SEAT— 1880 

In his volume entitled "Literary Friends 
and Acquaintances," William Dean Howells 
quotes the saying of Lowell's "which he was 
fond of repeating at the menace of any form 
of the transcendental, 'Remember the dinner 
bell.'" There is always something comfort- 
ing in the recognition on the part of philos- 
opher or poet of man's interest in so universal 
and appealing a theme as that of food and 
drink. In the present delightful little poem, 
probably written at Silverado, Stevenson not 
only declares that he dearly loves to drink and 
eat, and relates how the morning star, the dew 
and perfumes, the sweet air of dawn all put 
him in the humor for food, but quaintly em- 
phasizes his avowal by signing his name in 
full, as if to a credo. 



[ 109] 



AT MORNING ON THE GARDEN 
SEAT 

At morning on the garden seat 

I dearly love to drink and eat; 

To drink and eat, to drink and sing, 

At morning, in the time of spring. 

In winter honest men retire 

And sup their possets by the fire; 

But when the spring comes round again, you 
see, 

The garden breakfast pleases me. 

The morning star that melts on high, 

The fires that cleanse the changing sky, 

The dew and perfumes all declare 

It is the hour to banish care. 

The air that smells so new and sweet, 

All put me in the cue to eat. 
A pot at five, a crust at four, 
At half past six a pottle more. 

Robert Louis Stevenson 



[no] 



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IF I COULD ARISE AND TRAVEL 

AWAY— (1880?) 

In the previous two volumes of Stevenson 
poems issued by The Bibliophile Society, there 
was occasion to remark on the coincidence in 
metre (and a very unusual metre) in Steven- 
son's poem beginning "I Who All the Winter 
Through" and in Kipling's "Mandalay." 
The superlative advantage of Kipling's fam- 
ous verses lies, of course, in the fact that Man- 
dalay is a place where "there ain't no ten 
commandments, and a man can raise a thirst" 
Curiously enough, in the present poem, again 
antedating Kipling's, Stevenson longs for a 
land where all men can drink with "perfect 
zest," and where "we're done with the ten 
commandments." No charge of plagiarism, 
however remote, is imputed to Kipling; but 
the coincidence is certainly interesting. As to 
the date of the poem, here tentatively suggest- 
ed as 1880, one cannot be sure; but the hand- 
writing and context seem to point to the Cali- 
fornian days. 



[in] 



IF I COULD ARISE AND TRAVEL 
AWAY 

If I could arise and travel away 

Over the plains of the night and the day, 

I should arrive at a land at last 

Where all of our sins and sorrows are past 

And we're done with the Ten Commandments. 

The name of the land I must not tell; 
Green is the grass and cool the well: 
Virtue is easy to find and to keep, 
And the sinner may lie at his pleasure and 

sleep 
By the side of the Ten Commandments. 

Income and honor, and glory and gold 
Grow on the bushes all over the wold; 
And if ever a man has a touch of remorse, 
He eats of the flower of the golden gorse, 
And to hell with the Ten Commandments. 

He goes to church in his Sunday's best; 

He eats and drinks with perfect zest; 

And whether he lives in heaven or hell 

Is more than you or I can tell; 

But he's DONE with the Ten Commandments. 

[112] 









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GOOD OLD ALE, MILD OR 

PALE — (1880?) 

Again a point of interrogation must follow 
the date offered as the probable period of 
composition. At any rate, Stevenson was 
away from England or Scotland; and it is a- 
musing to find his mind reverting not — as so 
often in other poems written in America or 
the South Seas — to home folks and sentiment- 
al aspects of early life, but to the ales and 
beers of his native land. The extent of his 
thirst is indicated in one of the most whimsical 
of all his lines, "give me a vat to swim a 
whale," which may echo the thoughts of not 
a few latter-day American readers. 

GOOD OLD ALE, MILD OR PALE 

Good old ale, mild or pale, 

India ale and Burton, 
Give me a vat to swim a whale. 
When far along the verdant dale 

The far off spire appears, 
The mind reverts to Burton's ale 

And dreams of different beers. 



["3] 



NAY, BUT I FANCY SOMEHOW, 
YEAR BY YEAR— 1880 

The theme of this poem establishes its ap- 
proximate date, and though it may possibly 
have been written in the summer of 1880, 
more probably it belongs to the little cluster 
of poems for Fanny Osbourne that were off- 
ered to her by Stevenson prior to their mar- 
riage in May. 

The continuation and growth of their love 
was for Stevenson a fixed conviction that 
he incorporated into many of the poems writ- 
ten for his wife. Here it takes form in lines 
that are preceded by phrases referring directly 
to the hardships of Stevenson's present and 
his immediate past. The "my land" is Cal- 
ifornia, and the sea, that Pacific which was to 
encompass the closing years of Stevenson's 
life. The poem ends with two lines, notable 
in their connotation. In "Till all the plain be 
quickened with the moon," there is the sug- 
gestion of romantic love, and in the final line 
we have in "the lit windows," the thought of 
domestic life, of the happiness of home. 

The sonnet form here adopted is one that 
Stevenson had used, though not very often, in 

[»4i 



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the days of his apprenticeship in verse some 
ten years earlier. During the Samoan period 
he now and then resorted to an irregular son- 
net form; but this is as far as we know, the 
only exact sonnet of the intermediate period. 
Perhaps his acquaintance with French poetry 
led him to admit the two lines ending with 
the same sound — feet, defeat — a practice es- 
chewed by the best English sonneteers. 

NAY, BUT I FANCY SOMEHOW, 
YEAR BY YEAR 

Nay, but I fancy somehow, year by year 
The hard road waxing easier to my feet; 
Nay, but I fancy as the seasons fleet 
I shall grow ever dearer to my dear. 
Hope is so strong that it has conquered fear; 
Love follows, crowned and glad for fear's 

defeat. 
Down the long future I behold us, sweet, 
Pass, and grow ever dearer and more near; 
Pass and go onward into that mild land 
Where the blond harvests slumber all the 

noon, 
And the pale sky bends downward to the 
sea; 



Pass, and go forward, ever hand in hand, 
Till all the plain be quickened with the 

moon, 
And the lit windows beckon o'er the lea. 



[116] 



MY WIFE AND I, IN ONE ROMAN- 
TIC COT— 1880 

The early months of Stevenson's married 
life were spent at Silverado, a deserted Cali- 
fornia mining camp; and it was there that he 
wrote this draft of a poem never brought to 
perfection. Its main interest lies in its reve- 
lation of the things that Stevenson and his wife 
were hoping someday to have — she, a horse 
and a garden, and he, a yacht and a cellar well 
stocked with wine. These wishes bring to 
mind Stevenson's sailing, among the islands 
of the South Sea, and Mrs. Stevenson's many 
hours of happy and arduous hoeing in the 
garden at Vailima. But the final wish, to 
have their friends share in the pleasures of 
their household, was not to be fulfilled in that 
far off island which was their only real home. 

The well, knell, hell, dell, etc., in the mar- 
gin of the manuscript, as shown in the accom- 
panying facsmile, remind us of similar gather- 
ings of ammunition by Stevenson for other 
poems. 



[»7] 



MY WIFE AND I, IN ONE ROMAN- 
TIC COT 

My wife and I, in one romantic cot, 
The world forgetting, by the world forgot, 
Or high as the gods upon Olympus dwell, 
Pleased with what things we have, and 

pleased as well 
To wait in hope for those which we have not. 

She vows in ardour for a horse to trot; 
I stake my votive prayers upon a yacht. 
Which shall be first remembered, who can 

tell — 
My wife or I? 

Harvests of flowers o'er all our garden plot, 
She dreams; and I to enrich a darker spot, — 
My unprovided cellar. Both to swell 
Our narrow cottage huge as a hotel, 
Where portly friends may come and share the 

lot 
Of wife and I. 



[118] 



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YES, I REMEMBER, AND, STILL RE- 
MEMBER WAILING— 1881 

The comment at the bottom of the manu- 
script page — 

Brown in his haste demanded this from me; 
I in my leisure made the present verse 

would seem to establish the place, as well as 
the year of the composition of these verses, 
wherein the poet uses, for metrical experi- 
mentation, the memories of his first voyage 
to America. The discussions of John Adding- 
ton Symonds, Horatio F. Brown and Steven- 
son — men interested in certain classical forms 
of verse — led Stevenson to various successful 
efforts in English Alcaics, a group of such 
poems being included in the two-volume 
Bibliophile edition of Stevenson's poems. 
With this group belong the present verses, 
written at Davos in 1881; and they are of 
special interest because the attempt in rhyme- 
less verses in the first eleven lines is followed 
by a rhymed rendering of the same theme in 
the last eight lines. 

We know of no other poem of Stevenson's, 
based on that adventurous sea trip when, after 
having left home without announcing his 

[119] 



plans or bidding his friends farewell, the 
young author, ill and almost penniless, trav- 
elled on an emigrant ship toward a strange 
land where the woman he loved was awaiting 
him. It was in 1879 that Stevenson embark- 
ed; and the closing months of that year and 
the early months of 1880, constitute the period 
when his fortune was at its nadir, with sick- 
ness, and moments almost of starvation and 
despair, very nearly pulling him under. But 
even so, numerous poems of those days give 
evidence of that will and courage which he 
never quite lost, and in the present verses we 
find the poor emigrant raising his voice in 
songs of home. By the time — two years later 
— when he recorded in these experimental 
verses the memories of that difficult ocean 
voyage, home associations had been renewed, 
and he was again in Europe, with a wife who 
had at once won her way into the affections of 
his parents. 

YES, I REMEMBER, AND STILL RE- 
MEMBER WAILING 

Yes, I remember, and still remember wailing 
Wind in the clouds and rainy sea-horizon, 

[ 120] 



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Empty and lit with a low nocturnal glimmer; 
How in the strong, deep-plunging, transat- 
lantic 
Emigrant ship we sang our songs in chorus. 
Piping, the gull flew by, the roaring billows 
Jammed and resounded round the mighty 

vessel ; 
Infinite uproar, endless contradiction; 
Yet over all our chorus rose, reminding 
Wanderers here at sea of unforgotten 
Homes and the undying, old, memorial loves. 

R. L. Stevenson, esq. 
Here in the strong, deep-plunging transat- 
lantic 
Emigrant ship the waves arose gigantic; 
Piping the gull flew by, the roaring billows 
Rose and appeared before the eye like pillows. 
Piping the gull flew by, the roaring waves 
Rose and appeared from subter-ocean caves, 
And as across the smoothing sea we roam, 
Still and anon we sang our songs of home. 



Brown in his haste demanded this from me; 
I in my leisure made the present verse. 



[121] 



OF SCHOONERS, ISLANDS AND 
MAROONS— 1 88 1 

Although Treasure Island was not publish- 
ed in book form until 1883, Stevenson had 
well-nigh completed it during his residence at 
Braemar in 1881, and his letter of the 25th of 
August of that year, addressed to Henley and 
signed, "R. L. S., Author of Boy Stories," 
shows what fun he was having in the writing 
of this tale. "The Sea Cook, or Treasure Is- 
land, A Story for Boys," was the title Steven- 
son had in mind for the book that was the first 
to bring him fame; and he wrote to Henley: 
"If this don't fetch the kids, why, then, they 
have gone rotten since my day." It is that 
thought which underlies the present poem, 
written assuredly as a sort of rhymed pre- 
face for his "ripping" novel of adventure 
among the Buccaneers. If boys have grown 
too wise to care for treasure islands and dere- 
lict ships, for villainous mariners singing "Yo 
ho ho! and a bottle of rum," why then let the 
tale remain unread, beside the writings of 
Kingston and Ballantyne and "Cooper of the 
land and wave." (This, by the way, is the 
only reference in Stevenson's verses to Coop- 

[ 122] 



er.) But the budding romancer probably had 
no misgivings, and the young lad, Lloyd Os- 
bourne, owing to whom the book was written, 
and who gave orders that no women were to 
appear in the story, was there to indicate by 
his enthusiasm the reception that Treasure 
Island was to receive from the youth of the 
world. Like so many others of his prefaces, 
whether in verse or in prose, this one was not 
used when the book was published; and its 
present first appearance in type is an especial- 
ly interesting contribution to Stevenson liter- 
ature. 

It is worth adding, perhaps, that when 
Stevenson, writing from the "Schooner Equa- 
tor, at sea, IQO miles off Samoa, Monday, 
December 2nd, l88q," gave his friend Colvin 
— later Sir Sidney — the plan of his proposed 
book, The South Seas, he began with the head- 
ing "Part I. General. Of Schooners, islands, 
and maroons" — that is, with the first line of 
this poem. 



[ 123] 



OF SCHOONERS, ISLANDS AND 
MAROONS 

Of Schooners, Islands and Maroons, 

And Buccaneers and Buried Gold, 
And Torches red and rising moons, 

If all the old romance retold 
Exactly in the ancient way, 

Can please, as me they pleased of old, 
The wiser youngsters of today — 
So be it, and fall on I If not, — 

If all the boys on better things 
Have set their spirits and forgot — 
So be it, and fall on! If not — 

If all the boys on solid food 
Have set their fancies, and forgot 

Kingston and Ballantyne the brave 
And Cooper of the land and wave, 

So be it also; and may I 
And my late-born piratic brood 

Unread beside the ancients lie! 
So be it and fall on! If not, — * 

If studied youth no longer crave, — 
Their ancients' appetites forgot, — 

Kingston and Ballantyne the brave, 

1 The following eight lines were evidently intended by 
Stevenson as alternatives for the eight preceding lines. 

[ 124] 



For Cooper of the sea and wood — 

So be it also; and may I 
And all my pirates share the grave 

Where these and their creations lie. 



[«S] 



HERE LIES EROTION— 1884 

In connection with Stevenson's translations 
from Martial — included in the earlier Bibli- 
ophile edition, — translations that embodied 
two of the Roman poet's tributes to the little 
slave child and dearly loved playmate who 
died at the age of six, -it was natural to 
dwell on the fact that Martial's most winning 
poems were those concerning Erotion. The 
present verses show Stevenson attempting an 
imitation in couplets, rather than a verbal 
translation of Martial (Book V, No. 35), and 
with the previously printed poems, one begin- 
ning, "Here lies Erotion whom at six years old 
Fate pilfered," and the other, "This girl was 
sweeter than the song of swans," they consti- 
tute a modern poet's group of adaptations of 
an unusual theme of ancient literature. 

The original poem, "De Erotio," has only 
ten lines. Stevenson follows them fairly 
closely, the changes of the actual names of 
Erotion's parents (Fronte and Flaccila), to 
"mother and sire," and the introduction of 
the line "Where the great ancients sit with 
reverend face," being the only departures 
from the original worthy of note. 

[126] 



At the bottom of his Ms. appear two alter- 
nate lines as follows :- 

That swam light-footed as the thistle-burr 
On thee O mother earth, be light on her. 

HERE LIES EROTION 

Mother and sire, to you do I commend 
Tiny Erotion, who must now descend, 
A child, among the shadows, and appear 
Before hell's bandog and hell's gondolier. 
Of six hoar winters she had felt the cold, 
But lacked six days of being six years old. 
Now she must come, all playful, to that place 
Where the great ancients sit with reverend 

face; 
Now lisping, as she used, of whence she came, 
Perchance she names and stumbles at my 

name. 
O'er these so fragile bones, let there be laid 
A plaything for a turf; and for that maid 
That ran so lightly footed in her mirth 
Upon thy breast — lie lightly, mother earth! 



[ 127] 



TO PRIAPUS — (1884?) 

In Martial's works (VI- 16) this poem ap- 
pears under the title "Ad Priapum." Priapus, 
as the deity symbolizing the fruitfulness of 
nature, was the recipient of the first fruits and 
the first flowers, and his image with the sig- 
nificance of regeneration often appeared on 
the tombs of the ancient world. To him, there- 
fore, Martial addresses himself in this invoca- 
tion on behalf of the dead. 

The entire tenor of the verses, the desire 
that none but children shall enter the "green 
enclosure," would seem to indicate that this 
too was a poem for the beloved "Erotion;" 
and although Stevenson has lengthened the 
four lines of the Latin into six lines of Eng- 
lish, and has taken the liberty in the fifth line 
of naming a definite age, he nevertheless pre- 
serves the spirit and the sentiment of the or- 
iginal. 



[128] 



TO PRIAPUS 

Lo, in thy green enclosure here, 
Let not the ugly or the old appear, 
Divine Priapus; but with leaping tread 
The schoolboy, and the golden head 
Of the slim filly twelve years old — 
Let these to enter and to steal be bold! 



[129] 



AYE, MON, IT'S TRUE- 1885 

In a letter written from Bonallie Towers, 
Bournemouth, in February, 1885, t0 J onn Ad- 
dington Symonds, Stevenson tells of "two 
thundering influenzas" that he had caught in 
the previous August and November. He had 
recovered with difficulty from the latter at- 
tack. His ill health had "painfully upset" 
Mrs. Stevenson, and he himself confesses to 
feeling "a little old and fagged." Yet, as al- 
ways, his courage and his philosophical hu- 
mor stood him in good stead; and even as he 
lay very ill on his sick bed he could write 
such a bright little poem as the following lines 
in the Scots dialect. 



[ 130] 



AYE, MON, IT'S TRUE 

Aye mon, it's true; I'm no that weel. 
Close prisoner to my lord the de'il, 
As weak 's a bit o' aipple peel, 

Or ingan parin', 
Packed like a codfish in a creel, 

I lie disparin'. 

Mon, it's a cur-ous thing to think 
How bodies sleep and eat and drink; 
I'm no that weel, but micht be waur 
An' doubt na mony bodies are. 



[131] 



FAR OVER SEAS AN ISLAND IS 
(1889?) 

The date of the manuscript is uncertain, but 
the contents would seem to indicate that it was 
written prior to Stevenson's setting forth upon 
his voyage to the islands of the Pacific. "Tos- 
sing palms" belong to the Southern Seas, 1 and 
Stevenson was indeed "done with all," when 
he took up his abode in the far off island of 
Samoa. His recognition of the modes of rest- 
lessness which would assail him in a place so 
distant from all the friends and scenes of his 
past life, here leads him to call upon those re- 
sources of the spirit and of the imagination 
that are the mainstay of man in whatever 
abode. And so, after asking himself, — 

Have I no castle then in Spain, 
No island of the mind? 

he charges his soul to seek those enchanted 
islands and streams of desire that are not 
charted on any map. 

1 In Stevenson's description of the South Sea Island of Tutuila 
he says: "Groves of cocoanut run high on the hills;" and on 
entering the bay of Oa, he exclaims, "At the first sight, my mind 
was made up; the bay of Oa was the place for me!" 

[ 132] 



FAR OVER SEAS AN ISLAND IS 

Far over seas an island is 

Whereon when day is done 
A grove of tossing palms 

Are printed on the sun. 
And all about the reefy shore 

Blue breakers flash and fall. 
There shall I go, methinks, 

When I am done with all. 

Have I no castle then in Spain, 

No island of the mind, 
Where I can turn and go again 

When life shall prove unkind? 
Up, sluggard soul! and far from here 

Our mountain forest seek; 
Or nigh enchanted island, steer 

Down the desired creek. 1 

1 To these lines, which Stevenson wrote in one of his note 
books, he added the following verses which, although in a dif- 
ferent meter, seem to be a continuation of the same thought. 

There, where I never was, 

There no moral laws, 
Pleasures as thick as haws 

Bloom on the bush! 
Incomes and honours grow 

Thick on the hills. 
O naught the iron horse avails, 

And naught the enormous ship. 

[ 133] 



ON THE GORGEOUS HILLS OF 
MORNING 

(Samoan period, i 890- i 894) 

This page of verse, unfinished though the 
poem is, has a very personal charm both in 
the actual picture that it presents (Stevenson, 
abed, in the forest storm, listening to the early 
symphony of the birds), and in showing the 
thoughts that stirred him despite "the merry 
piping." Though repining was not his way, 
his letters often indicate his longing for that 
Scotland which he was never to see again ; and 
here, after the note of tropic beauty has been 
struck in the initial portion of his poem, he 
evokes the picture of the far-away Highlands 
with their "old plain men," and their "young 
fair lasses." And as cut off from all the ac- 
tivities and interests of his former life he re- 
flects on the remoteness of the secluded island 
from which he can no longer fare, the great 
forests seem to him mere "empty places," 
mocked at not only by life but even by death. 



[134] 



ON THE GORGEOUS HILLS OF 
MORNING 

On the gorgeous hills of morning 

A sudden piping of birds, 

A piping of all the forest, high and merry and 

clear, 
I lay in my tent and listened; 
I lay and heard them long, 
In the dark of the moonlit morning, 
The birds of the night at song. 
I lay and listened and heard them 
Sing ere the day was begun; 
Sing and sink into 
Silence one by one. 
I lay in my bed and looked — 
Paler than starlight or lightning 
A glimmer . . . 

In the highlands in the country places 
Where the old plain men have rosy faces, 
And the young fair lasses 
Quiet eyes, 
Light and heat begin, begin and strengthen, 
And the shadows turn and shrink and 

lengthen, 
As the great sun passes in the skies. 

[135] 



Life and death go by with heedful faces — 
Mock with silent steps these empty places. 



[136] 



RIVERS AND WINDS AMONG THE 
TWISTED HILLS— 1890-1894 

Obviously a fragment of a poem written in 
the Samoan days, these verses show how en- 
tirely Stevenson has left behind him the active 
and intense emotional life of the past, and 
now, among the rivers and winds and twisted 
hills of his South Sea island, keeps the tran- 
quil brow of reposeful thought, though well 
knowing that Death is not far off. 

RIVERS AND WINDS AMONG THE 
TWISTED HILLS 

Rivers and winds among the twisted hills, 
Hears, and his hearing slowly fills, 
And hearkens, and his face is lit, 
Life facing, Death pursuing it. 

As with heaped bees at hiving time 
The boughs are clotted, as (ere prime) 
Heaven swarms with stars, or the city street 
Pullulates with passing feet; 
So swarmed my senses once, that now 
Repose behind my tranquil brow, 
Unsealed, asleep, quiescent, clear; 
Now only the vast shapes I hear — 

[ 137] 



Hear — and my hearing slowly fills — 
Rivers and winds among the twisting hills, 
And hearken — and my face is lit — 
Life facing, Death pursuing it. 



[138] 



I AM A HUNCHBACK, YELLOW 
FACED 

(uncertain date) 

This little poem may possibly belong to that 
juvenile period when Stevenson was some- 
what under the influence of Heine. But 
while the German poet might easily have de- 
picted hunchback and harlot as being of one 
class with the fellow mortal whom they ac- 
cost, the "friendly hand" that Stevenson holds 
out as the poem closes is extended without that 
ironical gesture which Heine would have 
been inclined to make. 

I AM A HUNCHBACK, YELLOW 
FACED 

I am a hunchback, yellow faced, — 

A hateful sight to see, — 
'T is all that other men can do 

To pass and let me be. 

I am a woman, — my hair is white — 

I was a drunkard's lass; 
The gin dances in my head, — 

I stumble as I pass. 

[ 139] 



I am a man that God made at first, 

And teachers tried to harm; 
Here hunchback, take my friendly hand,- 

Good woman take my arm. 



[140] 



I LOOK ACROSS THE OCEAN 

(DATE UNCERTAIN) 
The following verses show a poem not al- 
together complete, although it seems that an- 
other two lines might have rounded it out. 
In any case, it is unique among the manu- 
scripts of Stevenson, in that it is addressed to 
America. It is written in a spirit of great 
faith in the future of our country and exhibits 
an almost mystic tensity in the hope it cher- 
ishes for what America shall achieve. 

I LOOK ACROSS THE OCEAN 

I look across the ocean, 

And kneel upon the shore, 
I look out seaward — westward, 

My heart swells more and more. 

I see the great new nation, 

New spirit and new scope 
Rise there from the sea's round shoulder, — 

A splendid sun of hope! 

I see it and I tremble — 

My voice is full of tears — 
America tread softly, 

You bear the fruit of years. 

[141] 



Tread softly — you are pregnant 
And growing near your time — 

[Manuscript breaks off here] 



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